This “secret” is not a new method of practice. It is an explanation of why practices that already work actually work.
It cannot replace practice itself. Its purpose is simply to lower the barrier to understanding, so that modern people can enter into practice more quickly and effectively.
Here, “practice” is not limited to religion or mysticism. It also includes modern psychological training, meditation, self-training, and similar systems.
Practice is not about eliminating desire. It is about deliberately changing the structure of desire.
Practice aims to change our state. Desire is not itself a state, but a driving force that continuously changes our state. That is why desire is one of the main things practice works with.
We can roughly distinguish three major human drives:
Vital Drive: the body’s need to maintain vitality.
Control Drive: the need to make oneself, other people, and the world conform to one’s will.
Love Drive: the need to experience what is good and beautiful on equal terms, and to release that goodness and beauty outward.
Practice mainly works with the Control Drive.
The Vital Drive usually subsides temporarily once physiological needs are satisfied. The Love Drive is influenced by how the world responds to us.
The Control Drive is more troublesome because it can easily reinforce itself:
Want → Get → Want more
Simple suppression usually does not solve this problem.
Stop pursuing love, and pursue money instead. Stop pursuing money, and pursue status. Stop pursuing status, and pursue “enlightenment.”
If the object changes but the underlying structure is still “I must get it,” then this is only substitution.
Real practice redirects the Control Drive into forms of expression that do not keep producing more of the same drive:
Control → Observe
Possess → Experience
Demand → Create
Dominate → Understand
Desire still exists, and it still finds expression, but it no longer keeps generating more desire.
This is why, as practice deepens, a person may increasingly appear to be “free of desire.”
In one sentence: practice is allowing desire to be expressed without letting desire keep producing more desire.
This does not reject or replace any traditional or modern system of practice. It is an attempt to explain a possible underlying mechanism shared by practices that work.
Understanding cannot replace practice. But the clearer the understanding, the fewer unnecessary detours one may have to take.
For adaptations or derivative use, please contact the author via email to obtain written permission. For discussion with the author, please use the Discussions feature on GitHub. See the LICENSE file for details.
勘破一切修行的秘密
See Through the Secret of All Spiritual Practice
English translation followed
修行不是消灭欲望，而是主动调整欲望的结构。
修行是为了改变我们的状态；欲望虽然不是状态，却是不断推动状态变化的动力，因此欲望是修行的主要关注对象。
人身上可以粗略区分三种主要动力：
修行主要处理的是情欲。
性欲通常会随着生理满足而阶段性回落；爱欲会受到世界反馈影响； 而情欲最麻烦的地方，是它很容易自我增长：
单纯压制通常不能解决这个问题。
不追求爱情，改追求金钱；不追求金钱，改追求名声；不追求名声，改追求“开悟”。
如果对象变了，但底层仍然是“我必须得到”，那只是代偿。
真正的修行，是让情欲换一种不会继续制造情欲的表达方式：
欲望仍然存在，也得到了表达，却不再不断制造新的欲望。
这就是为什么修行到最后，外表上会越来越像“无欲”。
这不是在否定任何传统或现代修行体系，而是在尝试解释它们可能共同作用的底层机制。
理解不能替代修行，但理解得越清楚，就越可能少走弯路。
2026年8月11日
稍详细一点
再抽象一点
Gitlink镜像 哲学基础：人的三种欲望（施工中，可以先看概述） GitHub
Practice is not about eliminating desire. It is about deliberately changing the structure of desire.
Practice aims to change our state. Desire is not itself a state, but a driving force that continuously changes our state. That is why desire is one of the main things practice works with.
We can roughly distinguish three major human drives:
Practice mainly works with the Control Drive.
The Vital Drive usually subsides temporarily once physiological needs are satisfied. The Love Drive is influenced by how the world responds to us. The Control Drive is more troublesome because it can easily reinforce itself:
Simple suppression usually does not solve this problem.
Stop pursuing love, and pursue money instead. Stop pursuing money, and pursue status. Stop pursuing status, and pursue “enlightenment.”
If the object changes but the underlying structure is still “I must get it,” then this is only substitution.
Real practice redirects the Control Drive into forms of expression that do not keep producing more of the same drive:
Desire still exists, and it still finds expression, but it no longer keeps generating more desire.
This is why, as practice deepens, a person may increasingly appear to be “free of desire.”
This does not reject or replace any traditional or modern system of practice. It is an attempt to explain a possible underlying mechanism shared by practices that work.
Understanding cannot replace practice. But the clearer the understanding, the fewer unnecessary detours one may have to take.
August 11th, 2026
a little more details
or more abstract
GitHub philosophy foundations: three human desires (under construction) Gitlink mirror
License
This project is licensed under the following terms:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
For adaptations or derivative use, please contact the author via email to obtain written permission.
For discussion with the author, please use the Discussions feature on GitHub.
See the LICENSE file for details.